


Easier (The Shame Remix)

by FestiveFerret



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Captain America/Iron Man Remix 2018, Happy Ending, Hero Worship, M/M, Mild Angst, Miscommunication, Remix, Steve and Tony Don't Get Along, holograms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-19 14:51:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13706721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FestiveFerret/pseuds/FestiveFerret
Summary: This would be easier if they could justtalk.





	Easier (The Shame Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [One and Five Nines (Obani)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Obani/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Shame](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13050033) by [One and Five Nines (Obani)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Obani/pseuds/One%20and%20Five%20Nines). 
  * In response to a prompt by [Obani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Obani/pseuds/Obani) in the [Cap_Ironman_Remix_Madness_2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Cap_Ironman_Remix_Madness_2018) collection. 



> A remix of One and Five Nines' amazing comic, Shame. 
> 
> Thanks to ashes0909 and SirSapling for alpha and beta reading!

_“Everything special about you came out of a bottle.”_

Tony groaned and dropped his head down to his desk. He hurt _everywhere,_ and as cheesy as it was, not all of it was physical. They’d seen Loki off three days ago, he’d made the offer to the team to stay, to move in, and to his surprise, they had. They would leave, of course, eventually, but they were here for now.

Including Steve Rogers. Captain America. And he _hated_ Tony. He was 16 floors up, probably polishing his shield or whatever he did in his spare time, and he was hating Tony. Things seemed like they were going to be okay, after the portal, after shawarma, but they weren’t.

“What do I even say?” he asked the workshop at large. Normal rooms wouldn’t answer, but Tony’s workshop was anything but normal.

“To what, Sir?” JARVIS asked.

“To Steve.”

“Might I suggest, ‘Good morning, Captain Rogers’? He appears to respond positively when I greet him that way, Sir.”

“I have no idea why I programmed you to have a personality.” Tony sighed and leaned back in his chair, lacing his hands behind his head and stretching out his shoulders. “Waste of zeros and ones.”

JARVIS didn’t deign to reply this time, and Tony found himself sucked back into his circular thinking. His usual approach to people hating him was to give them things, but he’d given Steve an apartment in his tower - which Steve hated anyway - food, every piece of new technology he could think of, and an entire gym full of equipment to destroy, and so far he’d gotten nowhere. Steve was short and sharp with him, scurrying away to his private apartment every time Tony bumped into him in the hallway.

“What does Steve want?” he asked JARVIS.

“That is a rather broad question, Sir. Do you wish me to relay the message to him?”

“God, no.” Tony sighed. But maybe there was another way he could ask Steve. “JARVIS… run a simulation. Use all available data. I know you have your greedy little fingers deep in SHIELD for me. Use it all - reports, observations of Steve here, books written about him. As accurate as you can make it. I want to walk through something.” There was a small noise to his right, and he looked up to see a perfect hologram copy of Steve Rogers leaning against his desk with his arms crossed. He looked confused in a slightly amused way.

“You wanted to talk to me?” AI Steve said.

“I did…” Tony stood, twirling the screwdriver around between his fingers. “You like it here?”

AI Steve shrugged. “Sure.”

“Right… good.” This was stupid. Tony did a lap around the workshop then collapsed back into his chair. “This is stupid.”

“What is?” The hologram raised an eyebrow.

“This was supposed to make it easier to talk to you, but it isn’t. What am I supposed to say? Sorry our first meeting was so shitty? Wanna braid each other's hair and talk about boys?”

“You don’t have much hair to braid,” AI Steve said wryly, startling a snort of laughter out of Tony.

“Yeah…” Tony tossed the screwdriver up in the air and caught it again. He didn’t even know what he wanted to talk about. “That whole thing with Loki, that was fucked up.”

“It was.”

Steve looked almost amused, which was making Tony feel unsettled and he wasn’t sure why.

“I didn’t mean it, you know.” Tony tossed the screwdriver again. “The bottle stuff.”

Steve shrugged. “I know. I didn’t mean it either.” The amused look dropped away, and his eyes drifted down to his hands, clasped in front of him, fingers fidgeting together. “It was the scepter. We both know that.”

“Yeah but - I mean do you really? The real you.”

Steve just looked at him.

Tony sighed. “You’re not really what I expected. When they told me I was going to meet Captain America. You’re so... young.”

“If it helps, you’re not what I expected either.”

“Cause you’ve seen the footage of me flying around, blasting AC/DC and being a public menace?”

“Uh, well, a little bit, but mostly because I knew your dad.”

Every muscle in Tony’s body tensed. “I know,” he gritted out. “I’m not like my dad.”

“I guess... You seemed like it though, from what I saw. What I heard. You have his… energy.”

“Fuck you,” Tony spat out, and Steve reared back. “Yeah okay, this isn’t going to work. JARVIS reset the program.”

Steve disappeared then reappeared, leaning against the workbench, wry smile pasted back on. Tony opened his mouth then closed it. He sighed and threw the screwdriver onto the desk. “Nevermind… turn it off.”

Steve disappeared.

**

_“Big man in a suit of armour. Take that off, what are you?”_

Steve unwound the wraps from his hands and tossed them aside. He pushed his hair off his sweaty forehead then frowned when it flopped back down into his eyes again. He needed a haircut. He didn’t even know where to go for a haircut in the 21st century. And the person he should ask was... Tony.

Frustration welled up in Steve’s chest and shot out through his foot, knocking the towel basket over. It felt good for all of three seconds, and then he was left with a gym floor strewn with dirty towels and the unpleasant churning back in his gut. He picked the towels up and put them back in the basket, setting it carefully back in its place at the end of the bench. Whatever cleaning service Stark paid for didn't deserve to suffer because he couldn’t control his temper.

He gathered his things and started the trek back up to his room. He was grateful to live here… he was. And it was good to be part of a team again - he needed that. But the man funding that team, a man who was currently somewhere beneath his feet, was someone Steve was just couldn’t get a handle on.

Steve had been so excited to meet him. He hadn’t told anyone, but when Hill had explained that Howard Stark’s son was alive, local, and involved with SHIELD, it had set Steve’s heart beating too fast. He’d downed all the information about him that he could, learning how to use the internet as quickly as possible so he could watch his videos and see his company’s products. It was even better than what Howard had dreamed about. Sure, he hadn’t made a flying car, but instead, he made a flying _suit of armour._ Tony was as much a visionary as his father had been, and even more brilliant, and Steve had been thrilled when he was told they were working together.

And then he’d met him. Tony was a hurricane. Steve was immediately set off balance. He barely spoke more than two words to the man before Loki’s scepter had them all spouting nonsense at each other. It was incredible really, the way the magic twisted their minds to say exactly what the other person wanted to hear the least. Later, looking back, Steve didn’t know where those words had come from, they’d just welled up out of him. But now that he knew Tony a little bit - a very little bit - and now that he had distance to reflect on what Tony had said to him, it seemed the scepter had managed to pluck his own insecurities out of his head and plant them in Tony’s mouth. And vice versa.

He’d been looking forward to meeting the man behind the future that he and Bucky used to joke about at the Stark Expo, but any chance of them getting along had been obliterated by a trickster god and the pressure of the search for the tesseract. Now, Tony was basically funding Steve’s entire life - his entire existence - housing him, feeding him, supporting the team, and Steve had told him he was useless and then tried to close a portal on him. What do you say to that?

Steve dropped his face into his hands. He’d messed this up beyond repair.

**

Tony powered into the workshop and kicked his shoes off, sending them skittering across the floor. So, okay, that could have gone better. The Avengers first call out for a mission and he and Steve had bickered so much that Tony had almost missed catching Clint when he flung himself off a building.

Tony took several deep breaths then slumped down in his chair. He picked up a socket wrench and twirled it between his hands.

“Hey, J. You still have that Steve AI?”

“Of course, Sir.”

“Play it.” The hologram of Steve appeared almost instantly. He was wearing different clothes this time, a pale, blue shirt and dark, fitted jeans. It was criminal how good he looked in that. “Hey, Steve.”

“Hi, Tony.”

“Things didn’t go so well today.”

Steve hummed. “No, they did not.” He sighed. “You don’t listen to me in the field.”

Tony started to protest, then stopped himself. “No. I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I -” Tony took a moment to gather his thoughts. He didn’t care that the silence was awkward while he worked through it - it was only an AI he was embarrassing himself in front of. But Steve stood quietly and waited anyway. “I used to do what people told me… and I became part of a system that was profiting off of death and destruction. I was lied to, used, manipulated. It’s not that I don’t trust you, Steve. I know you make good calls out there. I just - I can’t let things go unquestioned. I just can’t.”

Steve was quiet for a moment. “Okay.”

“What?” Tony’s eyes whipped up from the desk to Steve’s face.

“I get it. It’s not like I’m a perfect, shining example of following authority.”

Tony chuckled. “Really? Mr. Buy Your War Bonds?”

“My first actual military action was to ignore my CO, fly an unauthorized plane into enemy territory and infiltrate a base I’d been expressly told to stay away from. All to save my friend.” Steve shot Tony a little half-smirk.

Tony chuckled. “Well… when you put it like that.”

“But… even though I understand. It still doesn’t work. We need to be smooth in the field. I need you to follow orders.”

Tony ground his teeth together at the very thought. He didn’t reply.

Steve was quiet for a moment and when he spoke again, the “Captain America” voice was gone, replaced with something softer, younger sounding. “I suggested you for team leader, you know. When they officially asked me, after the Chitauri. I said it should be you. Fury told me you wouldn’t take it.”

“I wouldn’t have.”

“Why not?”

“Just because I don’t like following orders doesn’t mean I think I’m qualified to issue them. You’re the best for the job, Cap. I’m happy down here in R&D. I just have to… press sometimes.” Tony picked up his screwdriver set and pulled a circuit board over to him. He started unscrewing it from its casing. “Sorry,” he added softly.

“So… what if we talk about it? Talk strategy, look at plans, options, in advance. Argue about my decisions in the safety of a meeting room, instead of in the field where the delay could get someone hurt.”

“That’s… actually a good idea.” Tony looked up in surprise, and when the hologram flickered he realized he’d forgotten he wasn’t actually having this conversation with Steve himself. “Alright. Well, you know these plans as well as the real Steve does. No need to bother him. We’ll talk it out here, and maybe I can be a little more accommodating in the field in the future.”

Steve frowned, but he nodded in agreement. “Sure, Tony.”

Tony fell into his work for a moment then glanced up at the AI Steve. He hadn’t moved. “Hey, can you read the serial number off the back of that casing - no the other - yeah.”

“SJYG937475FD,” Steve read off.

“Thanks.” Tony typed it into his code then turned back to the circuit. “You sure are easier to talk to than the real Steve.”

Steve appeared at his side again, suddenly too close. “Am I?”

Tony tilted his chin to the side but didn’t raise it, unable to meet Steve’s eyes. Knowing the piercing blue gaze he’d find, even in the hologram. “Okay… turn it off, JARVIS.”

“Shall I reset the program, Sir?”

Tony hesitated. It wasn’t like the real Steve knew his secrets now; it was just a stupid program. “Nah. Save it.”

“Saving ‘Easy Steve’.”

**

Steve pulled out a sheet of paper.

_Dear Tony,_

He scratched it out. That wouldn’t work.

_Tony,_

~~_The things I said on the Helicarrier_ ~~

~~_I’m sure that, like me, you realized that the things we said to each other weren’t_ ~~

Steve tipped forward until his forehead hit his desk. Why was this so hard? Every time he ran into Tony in the tower, he tried to summon up some of the words he’d gone over and over in the shower but none of them would come. Peggy had been wrong - it wasn’t that he didn’t know how to talk to women, it was that he didn’t know how to talk to _anyone._ He spent most of his childhood using words as a shield, biting out a sharp retort so he’d get at least one hit in before he tasted asphalt. And he’d had Bucky to translate for him, the rest of the time. The only dates he ever had, were orchestrated by Bucky - and why was he thinking about Peggy and Bucky and dates? He wasn’t trying to ask Tony out - he was trying to apologize, or something. Start over.

~~_I hope we can_ ~~

Steve picked up the tablet Tony had left in the apartment for him and turned it on. He could break it - that would be an excuse to talk to Tony. But even as he thought of it, he dismissed it. First of all, he could never be so wasteful.

And second… that would involve actually talking to Tony, which he still didn’t seem able to do. He scrolled idly through his email for a while then set it down again. He picked up the pencil.

~~_Tony,_ ~~

**

“Give me Easy Steve,” Tony said, shoving his blueprints aside. It just wasn’t _working._

The hologram appeared and raised an eyebrow at Tony. “Yeah?”

“You play chess, right?”

Steve shrugged. “Sure.”

“Sit down.” Tony gestured towards the chair on the other side of the chess board and Steve sat, still looking at Tony with a wry smile, like he knew something he wasn’t saying.

Tony reset the game he and DUM-E had been halfway through then grabbed the two queens and held out his closed fists, one piece hidden in each. Steve reached out and tapped his fingers against Tony’s right hand. He couldn’t feel it - it was impossible - but his brain told him he could. Light fingertips brushing against the back of his hand. Tony opened his hand: black.

Tony realized two beats too late that the Steve hologram wouldn’t be able to move the pieces, so he brushed the whites off the board and asked JARVIS to summon holograms of those. Whenever Steve took a piece of Tony’s, he’d shoot him this soft, amused look and wait until Tony moved it aside.

“So everything’s going well with your new gauntlets?” Steve asked with a smirk.

“Oh yeah, it’s a fucking treat.” Tony sighed. “Can’t even get past the blueprint stage. Something isn’t connected right and when I look at it, it just all blurs together.”

“Have you tried flipping the blueprints upside down or horizontally and looking again?”

“I -” Tony cut himself off and stared at the point. Steve was two moves from checkmate. Fuck. “No… I didn’t… think of that.”

“Just a thought. I get that way with art sometimes. Like, you just have to look at it from another angle and suddenly it makes sense.”

“Right.” Tony was still staring at the board. Maybe if he defended with a bishop - no. “Where did you learn to play chess?”

Steve shrugged. “Erskine taught me during basic training. I think it was his way of getting me out of the path of some of the assholes in my unit. He’d ask me to come see him to prep for Rebirth and then he’d play me at chess.”

Tony’s gaze shifted up from the board to Steve’s face. “How did JARVIS know that to add it to your programming?”

“It was in Erskine's private diary. SHIELD has it.”

“Oh. Did you like it?”

Steve hummed. “Erskine didn’t say.”

Tony moved his piece and watched as Steve considered the board, then made his own move, smiling at Tony in triumph as he fended off the attack .”Well… do you like this?”

Steve was quiet for a moment. “Of course. I love spending time with you.”

Tony’s eyes snapped up from the board. Steve was gazing softly at him. No, not _Steve._ The hologram. “What?”

“I love spending time with you. I’ve really enjoyed these last three months.”

“That’s - I - No. It’s not real. It’s because I reset you when things go wrong. You have a skewed perspective.”

Steve - Easy Steve - shrugged. “If you say so. I don’t feel like I do. Besides, it’s been months since you reset me. We have fun together, right?”

“I -” Tony stopped to think about it. They really did. Over the last few weeks, he’d brought up the Steve program more often than not. Until JARVIS had started flicking it on automatically when Tony came in. He’d turned him off to work on the gauntlet, but as soon as it had frustrated him, he’d brought Steve back. “I guess.”

“Well. You’re one of my best friends. So yeah, I love spending time with you.”

Tony scoffed. “I’m your only friend.”

The hologram raised an eyebrow. “I have other friends - I mean, the me I’m based off of. Has other friends. That I also remember.”

“But the real you isn’t friends with me.” Tony tried not to pout. They’d been getting along better, at least in the field, since he’d started having strategy meetings with Easy Steve, but the real Steve still stayed away. When they were forced to be together, Steve would shoot him these odd, unreadable looks that made Tony’s stomach twist with confusion. It was just so _hard_ figuring him out.

“And whose fault is that?”

“Just play,” Tony grumbled.

Steve shifted his rook, and they played out the next few moves in focused silence. Tony was fending Steve off for now, but he knew he was pretty well screwed. He would damn well go down fighting though.

“You really like me?” Tony couldn’t help but ask after a few minutes of silence.

“Of course.” Steve beamed at him; Tony had never seen him look at anything that way and something warm and terrifying bloomed in his chest. He didn’t want Steve to ever stop looking that way.

“I like you too,” Tony admitted to his clasped hands. Light shimmered around him as Steve reached out towards him, brushing his fingers over Tony’s. There was nothing to feel, he couldn’t touch Easy Steve, but it still sent a shiver jolting up his spine. Tony sighed. “You’re a lot easier to talk to than the real Steve.” Though, even as he said it, it didn’t sit quite right.

Steve moved his Queen one square to the right. “Checkmate.”

**

Steve didn't sleep much - instead, he worked out or wandered the dark, still tower while the other occupants slept. He found the little quirks of the building that Tony had worked into the plans. He found nooks and alcoves perfect for reading, secret balconies, and the hair-whipping wind of the roof. He also found Tony’s absurd storage space.

It was a vast hall where Tony had dumped a massive amount of stuff - some from when the tower was first rebuilt, some from his old place in Miami, and some that he’d collected recently had apparently had no place to put. Normally, Steve wouldn’t dig through another man’s boxes, but Tony had encouraged him to.

“Lotsa your stuff in there, Cap,” Tony said, during one of the rare moments when they found themselves in the same room and out of uniform.

“What?”

“You know. My - uh - Howard used to collect your stuff. He had your cards and a bunch of shit from when you two were in the war together. A solid quarter of those boxes are really yours. Have at it, if you want.”

“How do I know which boxes to look in?” Steve asked.

Tony shrugged. “Starting ripping off tape until you see red white and blue? I don’t care if you dig through that crap. I’ve got nothing to hide. All the kinky stuff’s already been unpacked.” He shot Steve a cocky wink then wafted out of the room. Because conversations with Tony Stark ended when _he_ was done.

Steve had avoided the boxes, almost on principle because he and Tony still didn’t seem to be able to get through a conversation without pissing each other off - which maybe explained why Tony bailed early before they went off the rails - and Steve felt like unpacking for Tony was somehow giving in. But the truth was he wanted to see that stuff.

Curiosity got the best of him on a quiet, chilly, winter night, and he abandoned his room to slip down to the storage space. He turned on as few lights as he could to keep the calm magic of being alone at night, and set to work.

The boxes really were in no sort of order. Eventually, after a lot of false starts, Steve managed to isolate a general area where most of the Miami stuff had ended up. And the Cap stuff was mostly from Miami’s storage unit. Every third box or so, he’d peel back yellowed tape to find trading cards, photographs, even miliary reports about the Howlies. It was less of a meander down Memory Lane and more like a full-on cannonball into a raging sea of nostalgia. Steve’s chest hurt and his eyes stung after only a few boxes filled with his past, but he couldn’t bear to stop.

There were cues - crumbled cardboard corners and yellowed, cracking tape - to turn him in the right direction and before long he was hitting box after box of Howard’s collection. And then, suddenly, he hit one of Maria’s.

The box looked just like the others, probably all packed up at the same time - when Tony’s parents had died - but instead of old uniforms and notes of Erskine’s, this one was filled with photo albums.

Steve hesitated, but Tony had said he had nothing he wanted to hide down here, and Steve was already so deep in a pit of feeling that his hands were prying open the heavy floral cover of the oldest one before he really acknowledged what he was doing.

It was of Tony.

They were all Tony. They started the year he was born, a laughing, goofy baby. There were shots of Tony in the bath, Tony dressed in ridiculous, fancy clothing, pouting at the camera. Tony with the pieces of a radio spread around him in a halo at only two years old.

When Tony hit about three or four, things started to shift a little. Maybe not enough that anyone who didn’t know Howard would notice, but Steve did. Maria had framed the photos carefully, but the tension in Howard’s shoulders, the way Tony leaned subtly away from him, the way he looked at him when Howard wasn’t looking, it spoke volumes.

Page after page, Steve worked his way deeper into Tony’s childhood, and his chest grew tighter and tighter. There were still photos of Tony but none with the carefree abandon of that child with the dismantled radio surrounding him. The photos of Tony with his robotics work were all carefully posed, some were even clips from papers and magazines, and Tony had the special smile he reserved for media plastered on. Steve saw it slip into place whenever photographers showed up at an Avengers incident.

And here was its birthplace: Tony, at no more than eight years old, posing with a product of his genius brain, wearing a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

There was one photograph that recaptured the two-year-old Tony had started out as. It was a polaroid from somewhere around ten or eleven, and Tony was on the floor of what was clearly his father’s office. He had tools and supplies carefully laid out in front of him, all the screwdrivers lined up by size. He was unscrewing something, his tongue clenched between his teeth, focus carefully pinned on whatever he was working on.

The photograph had been torn into four angry pieces. Steve didn’t know by who or when, but someone had carefully pasted it back together, the seams breaking the image up into four quadrants that framed Tony’s face, the line of careful tools, Tony’s back, and his sneakered feet on the floor where he knelt. It was the only one that Steve felt really captured Tony - as well as Steve knew who that was - and someone had tried to destroy it.

Steve ran his finger lightly over the soft edges of the torn photograph. It felt like a revelation, but he wasn’t sure what of.

**

Tony turned the corner, already lifting his hand to signal JARVIS to get the workshop going, when he stumbled and stopped in the doorway. The workshop was already going. Well, one program anyway. Easy Steve was on, lounging attractively against the edge of Tony’s desk and chatting.

To the real Steve.

Shit.

Steve hadn’t caught sight of him yet, but Tony could see his brow creased and his arms crossed across his chest. He was so pissed. But he was still talking back, his jaw twitching and one hand bouncing off his crossed arms as he gestured. Easy Steve was smiling, amenable, but not giving him the soft, simple smile Tony had grown so accustomed to. The one he didn’t seem able to go a day without now. The one that sent something fluttering through his stomach whenever it was directed at him.

Well, there was nothing for it. The longer Tony let Steve talk to Easy Steve, the more likely it was that’d he’d figure out that things between Tony and Easy Steve weren't exactly… platonic. If he hadn’t already. Tony summoned every ounce of fake-confident swagger he could and pushed into the workshop.

“I see you’ve met my new PA,” he said saucily, flicking a finger towards JARVIS to mute the program. “He’s cute, I suppose, but his filing skills leave a lot to be desired.” Easy Steve stayed where he was, looking placidly between the two of them, but he kept his mouth shut. Tony shuffled the papers on his desk for a moment, but he couldn’t avoid looking at Steve forever. He lifted his eyes.

Steve looked mad, understandably, but also… confused? “Tony… what is that?”

Tony stared at Easy Steve who stared back and tried to come up with an explanation that didn’t come across as either “he’s a nicer you,” “I practice my arguments so I know how to win them,” or “he’s an emotional sex toy because you don’t like me.”

“He’s… an AI representation of you. Or he was.”

“Why?”

Tony worked his jaw, trying to decide how much to reveal. He shrugged, gave up. “I couldn't figure you out.” Tony tossed his hands in the air and collapsed into his chair. “I thought if I could run some scenarios, maybe I’d be able to.”

Steve was quiet for a long time, and Tony couldn’t bear to meet his eyes again. He fiddled with the screwdriver on the desk and waited for sentencing. “If you wanted to figure me out… why didn't you just spend time with me?”

Tony looked then, raising an eyebrow at Steve. “It didn’t seem like you particularly wanted to do that, Cap.”

Of all the things Steve could do, he _blushed._ “I’m sorry.”

Tony opened his mouth then snapped it closed. That.. really wasn’t what he was expected. “I should be the one apologizing. It’s weird.”

Steve hummed noncommittally and leaned in to look at Easy Steve more closely. “He, um, seems kind of different from me?”

“He’s… changed.” Tony squared his shoulders. “Evolved.”

“How?”

“Do you really want to talk about this? Look, I made a dumb mistake and then I couldn’t bring myself to kill it. It’s embarrassing as fuck. So just, yell at me, tell me how gross I am, how much of a violation it is, then shove off to let me lick my wounds in peace.” He sighed. “I’ll delete it.”

“I -” When Steve cut off and hummed in frustration, Tony looked up again. Steve still didn’t look angry enough. If anything, he looked _sad._ “I’d just like to know... Why - what is it about him?”

“I don’t know what you mean…”

“Why do you like him better than me?” Steve finally asked quietly. “What is it about him? He - he’s nicer than me?” Steve reached out and brushed a single finger over the arm of the hologram, fracturing the light. “He’s supposed to be an AI of me, right? But… he’s different. What is it about him that you like better? I ca- ” Steve fell silent again. His hand was shaking a little.

Tony was stunned into silence. It was the last reaction he expected to get. That Steve was - was _hurt?_ That made no sense. He should be angry. He should be disgusted. “Steve… I - I don’t like him better than you,” Tony said gently. “He was supposed to help me improve my relationship with you. I… guess I got carried away. I thought maybe if I could practice a bit, get all the asshole out of my system with someone I couldn’t hurt… But he’s not better. He’s _easier,_ sure. I mean, he’s called Easy Steve, for fucks sake, but he’s also, well, boring. He’s not you. Not anymore, anyway.”

“You keep saying that.” Steve’s voice was tight and uneven. “How did he change?”

“I, uh, kept resetting him. Every time I fucked up. He only remembers the good conversations he and I have had. He - um - he thinks he knows me but he doesn't. He knows a sanitized version of me. And since he’s a learning algorithm… the way he feels about me, it’s different now. Skewed.” Even as Tony said it, he knew it really wasn’t true anymore. He hadn’t deleted a conversation with Easy Steve in months.

“He loves you.” It wasn’t a question. Tony gaped at Steve. “He told me that. It was one of the first things he told me.”

“It’s not real.” Tony drummed his fingers across the glass panel in his chest. “I didn’t ask for that. I’ll delete it.”

“He got to know you and he loves you.” Steve couldn’t seem to let it go.

“I’m sorry.” He turned to meet Steve’s eyes, but Steve was still looking at the hologram. Tony reached out and hit a few buttons, ending the session.

Steve startled back. “Did you delete him?” His eyes went wide.

“No, I just turned it off for now. Steve…” Steve finally looked at him. “I’m sorry, okay? It doesn’t mean anything. It was just a stupid computer game with your face.”

The face in question twisted in pain. “I think it does…”

“What?”

“I think it does mean something.”

“I - I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Is it a program… that I could access?”

“You… want a hologram of - of me?” Tony stammered, confused.

“No, no. I mean that one. Can I talk to him more?”

_“Why?”_

Steve shot Tony the first look that had anger simmering under it. “Am I really the one who needs to be explaining himself here?”

It was a deflection, Tony knew that. Steve was giving Tony the option to get a free pass on explaining himself, as long as he didn’t question Steve’s request. It was a cheap way out. Tony took it. “Nah, okay, that’s fair. Yeah, you can talk to him more, if you want to. You just ask JARVIS to bring up Easy Steve. The holograms only work down here, so you’ll have to use these glasses if you want to talk to him in your - uh - apartment.” Tony twirled the arm of the glasses between his fingers, and Steve plucked them out of his grip.

“Thank you.”

Steve walked out, and Tony sat there, stunned. What on earth had just happened? Steve wasn’t exactly mad, but he _was_ upset, and Tony couldn’t figure out why. And now he wanted to talk to Easy Steve? Why? Was he lonely and he wanted a copy of himself to talk to?

Tony opened his latest blueprints and stared blankly at them, his mind churning.

**

Steve settled on the end of his bed then slid the glasses on. He resisted the urge to look at himself in the mirror. He’d needed glasses before the serum but hadn’t been able to afford them. But this wasn’t about that kind of vision.

“JARVIS, bring me, uh, Easy Steve…”

The hologram popped to life. Steve slid the glasses down his nose and peered over them. Nothing. He pushed them back up. There he was. “Hi.”

“Hey,” the hologram said in his voice. “Nice place you have here.”

“Um. Thanks.” Steve shifted, resisting the urge to fiddle with the glasses. “So, you were, uh, telling me… about why Tony had you.”

Easy Steve shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess he was lonely. And he wanted you, but you weren't available. So he built me.”

“He wanted me?” Steve’s voice broke on the last word.

“Yeah. Why else would he make me?”

“I - I don’t know. He said it was so he could practice getting along with me. I assumed it was so we’d be able to work together.”

“Hmm.” The hologram ran its hand through its hair in a shockingly familiar gesture. It needed a haircut as badly as Steve did. “I guess it started out that way. We talked strategy. He said it was helping. He asked me about my past a bit.” His brow creased. “But there wasn’t much I could remember. But then we just started hanging out. We play chess.” His expression immediately brightened, his smile starting vibrant, then softening to a warm, intimate one. It was bizarre seeing that look reflected back at him. Steve knew exactly how it felt to have love well up in your chest and leak out as that smile. “And I got to know him. And I fell in love.”

“How much are you like me?”

“As close as I can be. I’m based on observations of you in the tower, all the footage on record, your files, the reports - official and unofficial. Everything JARVIS could get his hands on.”

“How accurate is that?”

Easy Steve’s brow quirked up, and he gave Steve an eerily familiar half-smile. “How accurate do you think it is?”

“Wow.. that’s… unsettling.”  Steve took a few settling breaths. “What made you fall in love with him?”

“Hmm. Little things I guess.” The hologram turned away, as if he was seeing the past play out in front of him. Maybe he could. “The way he sings along to his music while he works. The way he dances when he thinks no one’s looking. How desperately he wants to _help._ Just… everyone, everything. He’s a problem solver. You give him a problem, and he’ll solve it. He spends time as freely as he spends money. If something matters to someone he cares about, he’ll go all out until he takes care of it…” Easy Steve trailed off then he turned back to Steve. He gave a little nod. “Or maybe it was this.”

Another hologram appeared, smaller this time, a copy of Tony with the fuzzy edges of the workshop around him. While Easy Steve was clearly the technology’s best imitation of a human - and shockingly convincing at that - this new projection was just as clearly a replay of something that had happened, a recording, played out in front of Steve. He wondered if he was really supposed to see this. Tony had given him access to Easy Steve, which meant having access to his memories as well. And Easy Steve’s memories were picture perfect. It felt intrusive, but Tony’s AI of him was pretty intrusive too, so he let it play.

“What’s that?” the voice came out of nowhere, but it was clearly Steve’s. Then the hologram of Steve shifted, rearranged, and became part of the replay, smiling down at Tony as he leaned against the workbench.

Tony looked up, startled, then he chuckled. “I forgot you were here.”

Easy Steve smirked. “I’m always here.” His voice was soft, affectionate, and Steve’s chest constricted, hearing that come out of his mouth, in his voice, and directed at Tony.

“So you are…” Tony turned back to the delicate work he had laid out in front of him.

“What is it?” Steve repeated.

“Nothing. Silly.” Tony peered at it closely, tightening something with a tiny jewellers screwdriver.

Steve shoved his shoulder against Tony’s and though the light shifted right through him, Tony still glanced up. “Come on.”

Tony sat back in his seat. “I’m just fooling around, giving my hands something to do while I think through the gauntlet.” He took the small object and turned it over and it immediately became clear that it was a tiny robot, similar to DUM-E, but with two arms that could swing around and grasp together.

Easy Steve burst into a brilliant smile, and Steve couldn’t help but do the same. “It’s amazing…” He leaned in and ran a revenant finger over the delicate arch of its arms.

Tony swiveled his chair until he was typing on his computer. He hammered on the keyboard quickly, then tugged free a cable that had been connected to the robot’s base. He pushed a button on the robot and it sprung to life. It trundled across the workbench bumping gently into each item on the desk before it found Tony’s coffee mug. It picked it up delicately and zoomed across the desktop until it reached the end. It gave an indignant beep. Steve longed to reach out and pick it up, help it towards its destination, and to his surprise, Easy Steve did reach out. He cupped his hands under the robot, but of course, couldn’t lift him.

Tony stood and picked up the tiny bot, letting it keep its coffee mug treasure. He carried it over to the little kitchenette in the corner and set it down again on the counter, Easy Steve following behind. The three of them watched as the robot set the mug down under the coffee maker and stretched up to press a button. It deposited a dose of fresh caffeine into the mug. With a satisfied beep, it picked up the mug and zipped back across the counter, presenting it to Tony.

Tony grinned. “Thanks, little buddy.”

Easy Steve laughed. “It’s adorable, Tony.”

Tony looked up and his face broke into a brilliant grin, eyes bright and happy. Steve sucked in a sharp breath, watching. That look… he’d only seen Tony with that look on his face once before and that was when he looked at Pepper, before their breakup. Did Tony love this program back? What did that mean for Steve? What did he want it to mean?

Easy Steve and Tony cooed over the bot a little more before the hologram flickered and shifted back to the AI in Steve’s room, eyes locked on Steve.

“Is he in love with you?” Steve asked.

“Guess you’d have to ask him that,” Easy Steve said with a cocky smirk.

**

Tony tried to work, but he couldn’t settle. He knew Steve was upstairs talking to Easy Steve - but about what? He’d done enough personal violation for one day, so he didn’t ask JARVIS, going so far as to lock Steve’s conversations with the AI, so Tony couldn’t look if his resolve failed, or he crawled too far into a bottle.

He drifted around the workshop pointlessly for over an hour and was just deciding he should head upstairs and wet bar himself to sleep when Steve appeared in the doorway. He was holding the glasses between his hands.

“You said it doesn’t mean anything that he fell in love with you.” It sounded like Steve couldn’t decide if it was a question or not.

“It doesn’t mean anything. I… twisted him to be someone who would like me. Because I wanted you to like me and you don’t. He’s not you anymore. He’s just like.. JARVIS and DUM-E and U. I programmed them to love me too.” Tony hadn’t intended the waver in his voice but he couldn’t seem to stop it.

Steve crossed the workshop and set the glasses carefully down on the edge of the desk. Tony stayed where he was, staring at Steve’s back.

Steve turned to Tony, stiff and resigned, like he was about to face down a firing squad. “Will you go out to dinner with me?”

Tony opened his mouth then left it there, completely at a loss for words. He tried to ask what the fuck Steve was talking about, but all that came out was a vaguely questioning squeak.

“Will you go out to dinner with me?” Steve repeated. He crossed his arms over his chest. “On a date.”

“I’m seriously completely lost. I made a Stepford Wives AI version of you and you want to go out with me?”

Steve’s face twisted adorably. “I don’t get that reference.”

“It’s - not the point. You want to _date me?”_

Steve took an unsteady step closer. His voice dropped, low and private. Intimate. Tony suppressed a shiver. “You told me he was in love with you, but you didn’t tell me that you were in love with him.”

Tony took half a step backwards. “I - what. It’s - I… don’t… what?”

“He showed me the day with the little coffee robot. He told me what you too used to talk about, do together. You played chess.”

Tony had nothing. He shrugged halfheartedly and failed at a smirk. “You’re very lovable?”

“So… there’s just one thing I need to know.” Somehow, at some point, Steve had shifted very definitely into Tony’s space and his voice had dropped even further, threatening the edges of _sultry_ in a way that made the back of Tony’s neck break out in a hot sweat.

“Yes?”

“Do you want him or do you want me - even if I’m not quite as easy?”

“You. No question. He was… nothing more than an illusion. A stupid fantasy. I’d pick you with all your hardness any day,” Tony said, finding his smirk again, even if his voice was still stupidly breathless. “I just didn’t know how to start.”

“Good.” Steve reached out and brushed the back of knuckles against Tony’s jaw then let his hand drop again. “Then let’s start with dinner. And we can finally get to know each other.”

“Okay.”

Steve deflated with a relieved sigh, and Tony could suddenly see how nervous he was, how much he’d been holding himself together with sheer willpower. But as soon as Tony agreed, Steve let go, unable to hold on to the illusion that he knew what he was doing anymore. “I thought you didn’t like me,” Tony said, feeling his confidence rise as Steve’s waned.

“Oh no, I never didn’t like you. I was… overwhelmed. I knew your dad.”

Tony winced. “I know.” He remembered his first conversation with the AI, and bit his tongue this time.

“He was kind of an asshole, but the stuff he could do - it blew my mind. And you, damn Tony, you’ve careened right past him. He was one of the first people I looked up when they showed me how the internet worked and it led me right to you. I stayed up a whole night just reading about all the amazing things you’ve made.”

“I - oh. Wow. Well, thanks, I guess.”

“You’re everything the future was meant to be,” Steve gushed. Tony looked up in time to see Steve’s cheeks pink. He dropped his eyes to the floor, and Tony slipped close again, catching them.

“Thank you,” Tony whispered. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Even him?” Steve gestured vaguely towards the glasses.

“Even him. Steve, you might be harder, but you’re worth it.” And because this was the real Steve, soft and warm and real - and complicated and challenging, but _real -_ Tony leaned up and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek, feeling Steve’s sharp intake of breath as Tony’s lips brushed against his skin. “Dinner tomorrow? Eight? I know exactly where I’m going to take you.”

“Uh, yeah.” It was a sigh more than words. “I’m glad you chose me,” he added softly.

Tony shot him a brilliant grin. “It was fun to pretend, I guess. But this is better. Way better.”

**Author's Note:**

> One and Five Nines did some AMAZING art for this before creator reveals were even up (wow). [See it here!](https://one-and-five-nines.tumblr.com/post/171394128686/yall-have-read-easier-right-i-think-you-should)


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